Symbol Matches

Symbol Starts With

Company Matches

Who gets the most (and least) vacation

When it comes to taking a holiday, it's best to be Finnish, and (not quite) the worst to be American. A new study ranks countries by their paid time-off policies.

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer

June 14 2007: 11:46 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's the start of vacation season, but you can probably count on one hand, if that, the people you know who are taking off several weeks this summer.

The tally likely would be much higher if you also had friends from, say, Finland, where workers must get a minimum of 30 days paid vacation plus up to 14 paid holidays a year. That makes it the country with the most generous paid time off laws out of 49 nations surveyed by human resource consulting firm Mercer. (See how the countries rank in the table below.)

Shangri-La really is for sale -- and so are these breathtaking getaways in Anguilla, Tuscany and the French countryside.
(more)

Besides getting less vacation than workers in many other countries, Americans often don't use all the time that they do get, and what vacation they take is spent in small slices and often in contact with the office, according to findings from other studies.

Unlike in most other countries, there is no federal law mandating that companies pay employees for time off or that they grant them a minimum amount of vacation days unpaid.

The typical practice in the United States - among large companies anyway - is 15 days paid vacation and 10 days of paid holidays for full-time employees with 10 years of tenure, Mercer found.

Another study, by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), found the norm to be much lower when considering companies of all sizes and workers of all tenures: 9 days of paid vacation with 6 days of paid holidays. It also estimates that almost one in four U.S. workers don't get any paid days off at all.

Joe Robinson, who runs the Work to Live Campaign and advocates for a minimum paid-leave law in the United States, contends a vacation system based on tenure, which is typical at U.S. companies, leaves U.S. workers with consistently low vacation benefits given how frequently people change jobs during a career.

All members of the European Union, by contrast, must provide workers with a minimum of 20 paid vacation days a year plus public holidays.

One reason may be a stronger relationship than exists in the United States between employer and employee, who is seen more on the level of shareholder in Europe, said Mark Sullivan, a worldwide partner at Mercer who conducted that firm's time-off study. Another may be the existence of legally mandated work councils, which represent employee interests in talks with employers, he said.

What's more, Sullivan added, companies in Europe are more likely to encourage workers to take at least two-week breaks at a time because they have seen an increase in work-stress-related absences and are increasingly concerned about potential litigation or long-term sickness or disabilities that result from work-related stress.

PAID TIME OFF WITH 10 YEARS' TENURE

Country/Region

Minimum Paid
Vacation Days

Paid public holidays

Total

Australia

20

11 (avg.)

31**

Austria

25

13

38

Belgium

20

10

30

Bulgaria

20

12

32

Canada

10

10 (avg.)

20

Cyprus

21

15

36

Czech Rep.

20

11

31

Denmark

25

10

35

Egypt

21

16

37

Estonia

28

10

38

Finland

30

14

44

France

30

10

40

Germany

24

10

34

Greece

25

12

37

Hong Kong

14

12

26

Hungary

23 (if over thirty-one yrs old)

10

33

India

12

19

31

Indonesia

12

13

25

Ireland

20

9

29

Israel

24

16 (avg.)

40

Italy

20

11

31

Japan

20

15

35

Latvia

20

11

31

Lebanon

15

18

33

Lithuania

28

12

40

Luxembourg

25

10

35

Malaysia

16

12 + state holidays

28 + state holidays

Malta

24

14

38

Morocco

21

19

40

Netherlands

20

8

28

New Zealand

20

11

31

Pakistan

14

14

28

Philippines

5

14

19

Poland

26

10

36

Portugal

22

12

34

Romania

21

7

28

Singapore

14

12

26

Slovakia

20

15

35

Slovenia

20

16

36

South Africa

21

12

33

South Korea

19

11

30

Spain

22

14

36

Sweden

25

11

36

Taiwan

14

11

25

Thailand

6

13

19

United Arab Emirates

30

9

39

United Kingdom

20

8

28

United States

15*

10*

25*

Vietnam

14

8

22

*These numbers reflect typical practice among large U.S. firms. There is no federal law requiring employers to give a minimum number of vacation days and holidays off, paid or unpaid.

**Correction: Due to a typo, an earlier version of this table incorrectly stated that the total number of paid days off in Australia is 41. It is, in fact, 31.